Well folks (me). It's me (me) again. I have work tonight but I can't sleep so I thought I'd wake up and see what's going on on the interwebs. Most unsurprisingly, jack shit is going on (name dropper). It's funny, when you put stuff out there on the internet, it's [theoretically] there to stay. In this modern day and age any fat guy with a collection of pocketed sweatpants (and really, who doesn't LOVE sweatpants with a back pocket for liquor store runs?) can, in a sense, accomplish what the great authors of history have had to toil for.

For fuck's sake, the godawful Jason Chen at Gizmodo (too lazy to link...but you know where the fuck Gizmodo is) posts some of the most dreadfully awful commentary that I've ever read ANYWHERE. Annnnnd yet - thousands of page clicks a day. Look at their site stats on Technorati. It's ridiculous. Writing...it used to be about connection. Look at the greats - Thomas Hardy, Alexander Dumas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and if you're hipster enough, Kerouac. These guys are so well known that my spell checker doesn't even flag them as a problem. But there used to be a connection. People used to read not just to learn, but to share in experiences. And these men, these masters (in more than a few cases there are some female masters, too), they saw the human experience so clearly...the futility of trying to escape your reality while simultaneously realizing that you can still change who you are...their message is eternal. It doesn't matter what century you were born in - these greats write prose that speaks to generation after generation.

I'm as guilty as Chen (though with a better vocabulary and, I think, a better cadence to my writing) because I mostly publish mental masturbation material - throwaway writing (that nobody reads). Although my site stats have indicated that I've picked up something of a following in the Ukraine! So...holla to my Ukranian brothas from another motha and sistas from anotha mista!

Yes, I publish a blog. Yes, I blurt out quick spurts of information. But I work hard to make contributions to fucking literature, yo. That's the eternal conversation. Sure you can read it on your Kindle or iPad or Poopbox or whatever, but the point is - and my hope is - that books never die. The masters of history, the masters who through the gift of storytelling have reminded us of the human condition; those are the ones we should seek to emulate, or to at least learn from.

Enlightenment can be a pain - and it kills as many as it saves, but we owe it to ourselves to discover something outside what we know. I joke a lot about having no readers, and the stats indicate that most of you click a link and then drop out, which saddens me, but alas - I'm here to stay.

Take a moment. Put down your Blackberry/iPhone/Buttfacephone whatever. Turn off your Google Talk account. Log out of Facebook. Read this short story by the one and only man who I ever looked up to, F. Scott Fitzerald.

I know you won't. But think about it. Here's the link. I won't tell you anything more than it is a piece of prose that possesses such powerful imagery and such vivid character that...well. Let's just say it's worth it.

On a final note, I wish that J.D. Salinger had been publicly psychoanalyzed. From "Franny and Zooey" (another great short story) to his seminal work "The Catcher In the Rye," homeboy clearly explored his subconscious in a very personal and intimate way.

That's what I hope to do. Hopefully you and I can connect. Hopefully we'll share a random experience together and the world will...for once....seem a lot smaller. In the age of Chatroulette where you can see everything from random penises to disappointed men waiting for something other than random penises, we've lost our connection. The human experience is digitized - I say we go analog. I say we live together. We experience things together. The more that write about what's right...the better. There are few voices left that are not tainted by commercialism, let your voice be heard, let your voice be heard for free...that's what this is all about - in a world full of people yelling for attention, let us be silent and listen. Our fellow (wo)man will teach us about ourselves if we have the patience to listen, the forethought to learn and the determination to proceed.

If you do read this, whether Ukranian or otherwise, I deeply appreciate that you even slightly care what I have to say. I realize I'm just a voice in the ether (although, if I may brag....the 32,000th most read blog online), and maybe my voice means nothing to you, or something. But thank you. Thank you for enabling me to realize where I need to open up, and thank you for not reading or reading. This is, after all, my blog. So anyone else who comes is a welcome guest to a very real party. For now, I'm off to read some more Fitzgerald and hopefully grab some more sleep.

Nobody may love you, everyone may love you. You must first love yourself.

Anyway, someone asked* me recently "so how do I comment on a post? I don't get it!" Well. I'm glad you asked, chemo-sabi (yeah, I know, poor taste right?).

There's two ways to put your thoughts onto my thoughts so we can make a thought sandwich:

See that little speech bubble above the post? The one with the big fat ZERO in it? You can click that. It'll take you to the actual post's page, where there's a nifty little comment box.

At the bottom of every post, there's a little "Read More" link. I don't know why it's there in every post - I'm not quite proficient enough in HTML to find what I did to make it that way, though I work tirelessly around the clock to figure it out. It's only supposed to be there when I want to entice you to actually read more of something - as a result, I get the feeling a lot of my posts that actually have more content after the "Read More" link don't get read. For this I can only offer you all a piece of my first born child. That's what people do to atone, right? Anyfuckingway if you click the "Read More" link it takes you to the post's page and...viola! Itsa baby boy! Or it's the comment box.

So comment. Converse. Interact. Please. We need to talk.

*Nobody actually asked that. I just really want you guys** to comment.
**There are no "you guys." I'm the only one that reads this, unless I'm at your house making you read this. In which case, I could probably use another beer.
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So I'm supposed to be this fucking writer, right? I mean I claim to be. I tell people "Oh yeah I have a blog," and then I turn around and go off on rants about how stupid the people of today are, how largely useless the internet is and how bloggers aren't real writers. Sure, I've been published twice, so I've got my writer's SAG card, if you will, but what the fuck am I contributing to the ongoing conversation? Why the fuck do you read this?

Hopefully because you enjoy it. Hopefully because, like me, you see that we too often don't realize all the things we claim to hate make up tiny bits of who we are. Hopefully because I make you laugh or make you think. More than likely its because I come to your house and MAKE you read it.

What am I trying to say here? Fuck if I know. Thanks, I guess. Keep coming, or don't. Its your life. I'm going to keep on doing this as long as I have thoughts to put out there - and I'm never going to write a bunch of books. I say that, because if I say that I will then we all know I won't. This is a blog of broken promises, of mockery, of sardonic observation and, oddly enough, about hope. Hope that if we all stopped talking long enough to listen, we might just learn something.

I've been a fan of Donald Glover, co-star of the NBC comedy "Community," since his earliest forays into the comedy world with the sketch troupe "Derrick Comedy." I was thrilled when I saw that NBC recognized his comedic talents and cast him alongside Joel McHale and Chevy Chase (seriously, who wouldn't want to do a show with Chevy Chase?) and equally shocked to hear that homeboy actually can carry a tune, too.

Check out this video of Childish Gambino (Glover's musical moniker).

If you like what you hear, Childish Gambino is offering up the album as a free download for a brief time.

There's been a lot of hullabaloo over the iPhone 4 and its alleged antenna woes. I've experienced the issue a few times myself, but it hasn't been anything that has caused a dropped call or anything. More troublesome, to me, is the increased sensitivity of the proximity sensor, which has helped me to do things like unintentionally create conference calls, put people on mute, hang up on people and put them on speaker. However, the antenna issue is getting all the attention.

Jon Gruber over at Daring Fireball has a hilarious take on what Apple is really trying to say in their press release, which claims that the iPhone has always used the wrong formula to indicate AT&T's signal strength. Apple kind of reminds me of a boss I used to have who would always blame the same one person whenever something went wrong.

Translation From Apple’s Unique Dialect of PR-Speak to English of the ‘Letter From Apple Regarding iPhone 4’

Friday, 2 July 2010

The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple’s history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.

We cannot believe we had to write this fucking letter.

To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones.

We cannot believe we’re getting shit for this.

But some users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna design.

(No translation necessary.)

At the same time, we continue to read articles and receive hundreds of emails from users saying that iPhone 4 reception is better than the iPhone 3GS. They are delighted. This matches our own experience and testing. What can explain all of this?

It really is a better antenna and gets better reception, overall, than any previous iPhone. That’s really the hell of this whole goddamn situation. It’s like a two steps forward, one step back design, except maybe more like three steps forward, because this thing is faster at downloading, 10 times faster at uploading, and most importantly is better at not dropping calls with a weak signal. But, yes, there’s that one step back, wherein it can suffer from unintended attenuation when you bridge the lower-left antenna gap with your skin, and frankly, we’re a little pissed that this one step back is getting all the attention.

We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is both simple and surprising.

We are going to blame AT&T.

Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars.

Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

Yes, with no case on the phone, your signal strength can drop by about 20 or even 30 percent depending how you hold the phone. We’re going to change the bar algorithm so that you’ll only lose one bar (maybe two, if you’re holding the phone obnoxiously tight or have gross sweaty palms) if you’re holding it that way.

To fix this, we are adopting AT&T’s recently recommended formula for calculating how many bars to display for a given signal strength. The real signal strength remains the same, but the iPhone’s bars will report it far more accurately, providing users a much better indication of the reception they will get in a given area. We are also making bars 1, 2 and 3 a bit taller so they will be easier to see.

We are braced for the backlash when, after installing this update, people who weren’t experiencing any problems at all with their iPhones start complaining, loudly, that their phones which used to get five bars now only get three or two or whatever from the same locations, and we all know — us and everyone reading this — that Gizmodo will immediately declare that the update has made iPhone 4 reception worse, even though we’ve just explained that we’re not changing anything related to actual reception, but rather only to how we indicate signal strength.

We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G.

(No translation necessary.)

We have gone back to our labs and retested everything, and the results are the same — the iPhone 4’s wireless performance is the best we have ever shipped. For the vast majority of users who have not been troubled by this issue, this software update will only make your bars more accurate. For those who have had concerns, we apologize for any anxiety we may have caused.

Don’t fuck this thing up for us. We mean, have you seen the Retina Display?

As a reminder, if you are not fully satisfied, you can return your undamaged iPhone to any Apple Retail Store or the online Apple Store within 30 days of purchase for a full refund.

We dare you.
And take your class action suits filed four days after we released the goddamn thing and stick them up your fucking asses.

We hope you love the iPhone 4 as much as we do.

Seriously, have you seen it?

Thank you for your patience and support.

Don’t hold it that way or buy a case.

Gizmodo, the trashiest of tech-blogs, explains (while wiping Cheetos dust on their worn-out sweatpants and burping) their take on the software update here.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
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Another Odd Lie?

01 Jul 2010 10:45 am

From a speech delivered at the International Bowl Expo in Las Vegas yesterday:

Palin recalled her youth when her father set pins in Idaho. "My Dad was on a Thursday night bowling league," she said. "He bonded with his buddies. I have memories of that point of my life which mean very, very much to me."

Professing a personal appreciation for the bowling industry, Palin also noted that, during his high school years, her father Chuck Heath Sr. worked as a pin boy and that she herself has fond childhood memories of watching him play in this Thursday night bowling league.

Palin was three months old when she left Idaho.Maybe there's some explanation for this that I don't know of yet. But the truth is: Palin constantly makes stuff up to appeal to whatever audience she is in front of.

God knows I have some great memories from my first weeks of life. I look back fondly on the incubator that nursed me to health, to the bigass needle they allegedly put in my brain for some reason (I maintain that I'm a genetic experiment...it's why I have the super-ability to be amazingly awesome)...and don't judge me. We all know that there's only two places Sarah Palin can end up and one of those is the Red Shoe Diaries.
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